High Court To Rule On Assisted Suicide

`Right To Die' At Issue In Cases In 2 States

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether state bans on physician-assisted suicide violate a so-called right to die.

The outcome of appeals of New York and Washington state cases is almost certain to affect the divisive national debate over whether suicide should ever be a medical option for the terminally ill.

The court, which begins public sessions Monday after a three-month recess, indicated it would hear arguments in the two cases early next year and issue a decision by the end of June. Neither case involves Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who is most associated with the issue.

In both cases, federal appeals courts struck down the state laws banning doctor-assisted suicides on the basis of the 14th Amendment's guarantees of equal protection and due process of law.

In the New York case, the appeals court ruled the state law unconstitutional because it criminalized physician-assisted suicide but allowed patients to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment. This resulted, the court said, in the unequal treatment of the terminally ill.

However, the appeals court in the Washington case ruled that mentally competent, terminally ill patients have a legal right to obtain physician assistance in ending their lives.

In 1991, Washington voters rejected a state ballot initiative that would have authorized physician aid in dying.

Patricia King, who teaches medical ethics at Georgetown Law Center, emphasized Tuesday that the appeals involve situations in which patients requested a lethal dose of medication from their physicians and administered the medication themselves.

"The protection and preservation of human life is, without question, the quintessential duty and responsibility of the sovereign states in our federal system of government," argued officials of 15 states in urging the high court to hear the two cases.

In 1990, the Supreme Court recognized that a competent person has a right, or what in legal terms is called a "liberty interest," in refusing unwanted medical treatment. This came in a ruling involving a Missouri woman, Nancy Cruzan, who was described as in a "persistent vegetative state."

Since the Cruzan decision, however, three new justices--Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer--have joined the court and made the outcome of the new cases uncertain.

"One could imagine the court going either way," commented Michael Seidman, a professor at the Georgetown Law Center.

The American Medical Association warned the court that physician-assisted suicide "is incompatible with the physician's healing role" and violates the ancient Hippocratic Oath.

"Given the court's historic reluctance to recognize a right to obtain medical treatment," the AMA said, "it would be extraordinary if the first medical treatment to be recognized as a constitutional entitlement were a course of drugs intended to kill the patient."

The AMA brief was also signed by the California Medical Association and the Society of Critical Care Medicine.

The most visible advocate of physician-assisted suicide is Kevorkian, a retired pathologist in suburban Detroit who has acknowledged assisting in at least 41 suicides since 1990.

Kevorkian, who has been the target of unsuccessful criminal prosecution, is challenging Michigan law in federal court. The U.S. Supreme Court last year turned down his separate, state court challenge to the Michigan law.

In the Washington state case, the state's attorney general told the Supreme Court that the lower-court ruling would apply not only to physicians but also to other health-care workers, family members and friends.

In advance of its 1996-97 term, which officially begins next week, the court also agreed to decide, in a Georgia case, whether states may require political candidates to pass a drug test.